Wheels

I’ve had some screaming deals off of Ebay over the years but these days, with it being so much busier and popular with the masses, it’s now more amazing to snatch a good deal than ever before. So I was pretty stoked to grab this set of tidy Superior Wire Mags in tasty 14×8j flavour for a meagre £72! Okay, so 14’s are kinda small, but in 4×114.3 PCD, there’s still a ton of cars they’d fit. Who cares?! All that matters, is they are now in my shed and destined to go on my Nissan Cedric! A pretty appropriate rim for the Cedric I think, as these were also sold in Japan by Enkei.

The van is finally sat on it’s new shiny wheels and tyres and looking mighty fine. I went for 295/50R15 Kumho’s for the rear. Of course, the first task with new tyres is to remove those pesky labels they stick on the tread…

Some more rims for the collection. Some teeny little FWD offset 12″ Watanabes on the left to go on a Daihatsu and some tasty 14″ Dunlop LM-24’s on the right. Those Dunlops are even nicer in person han they looked in the auction pic. I think they might have to go on my 510…

I have stripped the anodising off of my set of 14×7 Weds and polished the rims up then shot the centres with some Ford Solar gold base, added a bit of sparkle courtesy of a couple of coats of House of Kolor Platinum Metajuls basecoat then a couple of clear coats. It was done in a hurry but looks OK. Yeah I know it looks like the body colour but trust me, it isn’t. The lower half of the body is going to get repainted in Ford Champagne Gold, a much paler gold with a slightly redish/pinky tinge to it. Now all I need to add it about a 3″ drop and then some lower profile treads. Soon, soon…

If like me you’re keen on fitting tasty wheels to everything in sight, then you might want to get yourself one of these handy, telescopic PCD measuring tools. This is a dead handy thing to have when you’re at a swapmeet or down the scrapyard as you can instantly check the PCD of any 4, 5 or 6 stud rims. In some circumstances you can also flip it over and use it to measure the studs on a hub but only if the hub centre doesn’t protrude too far. I picked this up at the NSRA swapmeet for a fiver but you can go to Bialbero Racing and order one online. There’s more info about this neat little tool there too.

Okay, so I haven’t posted anything for a month but rest assured, it’s not like I haven’t been doing anything! On the contrary, some projects have moved on a fair bit… one of them being my Datsun 160J SSS. Having secured some nice wheels for it, I couldn’t resist any longer and had to get them onto it. First there was the matter of the stock sky high ride height to deal with. Fortunately I still had an old set of lowering springs which I’d previously used in my 510, a 610 and another 710 so that easily solved the problem. The rear end was dismantled and the new heavy duty lowering springs fitted along with some shocks that were 50mm shorter than stock. The springs dropped the back right down to pretty much exactly where I wanted it but the front as it stands isn’t quite low enough. However, a set of JIC camber plates and some carefully modifying of the upper spring seats should help it down another 20mm and cure the slight positive camber it’s gained now. Currently the rims are wrapped in 175-60×14’s but it would appear I’ve room for more on the rear so I think I’ll be swapping them for some 185-55×14’s on the back. As the rears are 7j and the fronts are 6.5j I’ll stick with the 175’s up front.

Techno Toy Tuning(T3) has been machining up specialised parts for Toyota enthusiasts for some time but their line-up also offers a bunch of very nice parts for Datsun enthusiasts. T3’s offerings consist primarily of suspension components, all of which are custom fabricated for performance applications. Parts are available for 240Z, 510/610 as well as S13 and S14 models. The selection for 510 and 610 models includes coil-over conversions for both front and rear suspension, camber plates and roll center adjusters. Their fully adjustable tension/compression rods look particularly nicely made and look to be even more beefy than the stock items. Prices are very reasonable too, especially with the dollar still being relatively weak against the pound. T3 camber plates, come in at only $180 a pair and having bought a set previously, I can vouch for their excellent quality. Adjustable T/C rods are just $200 and their own strut brace is a bargain at $119. But that’s not all that T3 have to offer. Anyone in the market for a nice set of old school wheels might also want to take a look at what they have to offer…

When I got my Sunny Truck, it’s stock ride height was seriously sky high… much higher that any B110 saloon or coupe I have seen. Having been built in South Africa and intended for use on some of the countries rough terrain and unmade roads, this came as no surprise but for my purposes it was no good. I want it low! So far, the only thing I had done is to get the rear leaf springs de-cambered (flattened). This dropped the rear by around 50mm but didn’t really make it low so I plan to drop it further using some 50mm lowering blocks. Up front the stock suspension is like regular B110’s only sporting drum brakes in place of the more common discs. I needed a brake upgrade but nothing wild so I figured I’d just swap in B310 Sunny front struts which have larger discs than B110 saloons and coupes. To get it as low as I wanted but whilst retaining some ride quality, I decided to build some extra short struts. I chopped about 65mm out of the legs and converted them to adjustable coil-overs. I’m using some 185lb/in springs initially as I just happened to have a set already. These may be suitable but if not, at least they’ll give me some idea what poundage to go for. After having these parts sat around for the last 18 months, I’ve finally got them installed….

As I previously mentioned, one of the 7×14 River Side Riverge wheels I acquired recently for my Violet SSS is in pretty nasty condition. In fact it kind of looks like it’s spent some time in the sea, it’s so corroded. Close inspection revealed that while there was a lot of surface corrosion, there didn’t appear to be any deep pitting so I set about trying to clean up this nasty wheel. If all else fails I figure I could just get it wet blasted, but doing so would mean I’d have some serious work to do to polish the rim and face of the wheel back to a smooth surface, so the only alternative is to do it chemically.

Although I have yet to start doing any work on my KP710 160J SSS, the parts keep on coming. Newest arrival, and something I’ve wanted for some time, is a pair of Japanese market rear quarter emblems. In Europe these cars always wore “Datsun 160J” emblems on the rear quarters but I always think of them by their Japanese market name of “Violet” so scoring a pair of these emblems is a real bonus.

Another welcome delivery today was another pair of River Side Riverge wheels. I already have a set of four of these in 6.5×14 but these two are 7×14 so will fill the arches out a little better on the rear. I am surprised at just how much dish they look to have for 7″ rims. Of course they both need refurbishing. In fact one looks pretty awful but doesn’t appear to have and serious corrosion. As soon as the weather improves a little I shall get on with swapping the suspension over to lower it and begin rebuilding the brakes. I can’t wait to see it low with these rims fitted!